Student experiences

Student experience FPP - Performance

Student experience Crispijn Huijts

“During my BSc I discovered that my interests of study courses are very broad, I like mathematics, aircraft performance, aerodynamics, aircraft design and many more subjects. In selecting a Master Track, I first had some difficulty. Due to this wide interest, many tracks seemed like a good choice to me. However, the combination of the focus areas flight mechanics and aircraft design, offered by Flight Performance and Propulsion, seemed to be the a perfect fit for my interests.

A varying Master programme can be chosen in which you can focus on your personal preference, but still have a complete portfolio full of different aircraft design courses (and not only focusing on one area). With the programme you learn a lot about air breathing engines, aerodynamics, aircraft design and design optimisation. This makes you a student with a broad range of knowledge, ready for the aerospace industry!

Currently I am writing my MSc thesis about the impact of control allocation (CA) techniques on trim drag for various (new) aircraft configurations. I have been able to do wind tunnel tests for my research, where I analysed the performance of the control allocation algorithms. This is done by deflecting various control surfaces on a blended wing body aircraft model and logging the model’s coefficients. After the tests, the second part of the research consisted of implementing the CA algorithms in a conceptual design tool for (un)conventional aircraft. This software tool is developed by the department of FPP itself and by adding a trim module, I can help develop this tool further.

By combining wind tunnel tests and the implementation in the design tool, I am not only working on one programme for 8 months, but also have a practical touch with performing wind tunnel tests, which has been amazing and made me even more enthusiastic about the subject.”